Booth

“Just look at them. Acting all . . . “

Rebecca stares at the five people in the booth on the other side of the bar, past the empty dancefloor. Three men and two women, dressed in black and drinking champagne.

“Acting all what?”

Chloe asks, her face showing a strained patience.

“Like they’re special, just because they’re drinking fucking champagne.”

Rebecca stabs the stupid ice cubes in the sparkling water with her straw. The straw bends and the thin plastic pushes into her skin until the ice slides away and into the sides of the glass.

“Can’t you relax? Leo’s going to be here soon and he’s reserved a table.

Rebecca shrugs and tightens her grip on the bar, letting it support her. She pushes herself back up right and there’s a moment of weightlessness before she rocks back down towards the bar.

“Are you sure you’re OK?” Chloe asks. “You don’t seem very comfortable? We can go somewhere quieter, somewhere with seats.”

Rebecca tugs at the neck on her dress, the black dress with the white collar that people used to say made her look Amish and which would hang over her, loose and shapeless, but which now seemed to suffocate her.

“I’m fine. It’s just being back, it’s been a while.”

A tall waitress with blonde hair takes a bottle of champagne over to the booth. Male voices make loud and vague noises, and there’s the sound of skin slapping skin as they high five each other. These are the worst kind of people; people who had to be so noisy about everything, like they’re trying to show how much of a good time they’re having; trying to convince everyone; trying to convince themselves.

Rebecca had not been like that. She’d liked the closeness of being in a cubicle with Chloe, the muffled music cocooning them together, making her want to stay there, away from the bar and the noise and everyone else, whilst the powder trickled down her numbing throat. But then it stopped being just Chloe and it became anyone; people she didn’t like, or people she’d just met in that bloom of rapidly wilting good feeling, when she wanted to talk to people and for them to listen, and which would always surprise her. The things she didn’t usually dare talk about would be easy and the everyday became urgent. But then she’d gone back to not wanting to talk, so she would just remove herself without saying anything. She would lean against doors with no locks, an uneven hand lifting a key up to her nose, the bump of powder always too small, as the edge of her mouth twitched and flickered into what might have been a smile. Sometimes after long periods of saying nothing, when to talk would only draw attention to her, she would take off and go back to her flat. She then stopped going out altogether. She didn’t see the point in it. Things would always end up with her back in her flat and alone, and nothing would have changed. So she stayed in, lying in bed, the duvet pulled up to her neck, hiding her legs as they turned and twisted, her feet trying to dig themselves into the mattress, the small silver tray always within reach.

She’d been lying like that when Chloe had come around uninvited. Chloe had lent over and some of her hair had gotten into Rebecca’s mouth, as her teeth and tongue grated and slid over and against each other. When Chloe had let go, Rebecca was surprised to find that she was crying, but not as surprised as when she too started to cry. She’d been surprised as she thought she was enjoying herself, because she was doing what she did to have a good time. But she had cried, and the tears had been real.

Chloe orders two sparkling waters and passes one to Rebecca.

“Wow, thanks”. You know you can drink, I do have some self control.” Rebecca says, jabbing at the ice cubes with the straw.

“No, it’s OK. I can’t be hungover tomorrow anyway.”

Rebecca always thought of Chloe as selfish. She tries to be well meaning, she realises that, but her selfishness always wins through. That’s just the way things seem to happen with people like her. Rebecca thinks of what a struggle this must be for Chloe; drinking water and pretending nothing’s changed.

“Why? What are you doing tomorrow?” Rebecca asks, mainly out of a desire to make things difficult for Chloe.

“I’m going to the milliner, for the editor’s wedding.”

“What?”

“A hatmaker.”

“I know what a milliner is, but why are you going? You’re only an intern.”

“She invited me to the wedding, so I really should go. I think it’s a good sign.”

Rebecca shakes her head. As well as being selfish, Chloe always seems to be so enthralled by other people, as if her life would be bettered by simply knowing more people, the right people. To Rebecca, she always seems to choose the wrong people and the wrong reasons. Like, at University it had been the girl with the new Prada bag and now it was the people at the magazine; people Rebecca had only met briefly, but disliked intensely.

“Maybe it is. But she’d be a bit of a bitch not to invite you. You are basically her slave.” Rebecca says.

“Oh, and what you’re doing is so much better?”

“Well, I get paid.”

“To do what? Something you’re not interested in and makes you depressed.”

“Let’s not.”

They both look down and don’t say anything. Rebecca wonders if Chloe has got anything with her. It wouldn’t surprise her if she did, and she wouldn’t even be angry. If it was her she’d do the same. She knows that when she’s not with her friends, she’s not with them, but being high then not being high, that’s an absence that remains, something she can feel. She knows that it’s different for Chloe, but for her that’s the way it is; being away hasn’t changed it, and perhaps nothing ever will. Just thinking this quickens her pulse and swells her stomach with an excitement which she knows will turn to irritation and then annoyance the longer she stays at the bar drinking water. She pushes herself upright and feels weightless for that moment before she falls back again.

“Cigarette?” Chloe asks. Rebecca makes a face that only means something to Chloe and they both laugh, as if it could be any time in the ten years they’ve known each other and not now.

When she’d been away, Rebecca had worn flat shoes; her slippers when indoors, or her trainers when she was ready to go outside. She’d only put her heels back on for the journey to London. Walking through the station to the Underground she’d felt unsteady. The noise and the people criss-crossing in front of her with their cases had threatened to topple her over, but she’d breathed in and repeated the secret sentence to herself four times. She had felt calmer, but standing on the escalators, she’d felt like she was on her tip-toes, peering over the edge of something deep and unimaginably dark, and there was nothing and nobody to stop her from jumping in.

Chloe and Rebecca stand outside to the left of the door, trying not to step outside the small space of indoor warmth before it’s lost in the outside air, their shoulders pressed against each other’s.

“Hey!” Chloe says, turning to the street. A thin man with a beard and a short girl with bobbed hair and glasses stop and wave and Chloe waves back. Rebecca thinks of how the girl’s hair and long coat make her look like a monk and wonders if it’s intentional. The couple walk towards Rebecca and Chloe. Rebecca tugs at the neck of her dress and takes a sharp pull on the cigarette.

“Adam, Laura, you remember Rebecca don’t you?” Chloe says. The couple smile. The man’s teeth are large and white, and Rebecca struggles with a fractured memory of a beard and teeth, but can’t place who it was or where she’d met them. She stares at the teeth that peer out of the mess of beard and tires to build the memory around them, but nothing comes, she can only remember the beard and teeth, everything else has faded away. The girl she knows she hasn’t seen before. She smiles silently at them both, and thinks how predictable it is for them to be together; the monk girl and the beard.

Chloe speaks to the couple about something that had happened, a party or an opening, whilst Rebecca had been away. Rebecca shivers and her hands fidget so she lights another cigarette and looks over the couple’s heads, out into the street, watching the taxis pull up and drive away, thinking of how easy it would be for her to get in one and go.

“You could’ve made an effort?” Chloe says, as the couple walk away.

“What? I didn’t know them, and they looked annoying.”

“What’s the point of you coming out if you’re not going to at least try to speak to people?”

Rebecca shrugs and turns to go back inside the bar. She knows it’s pointless being out, the way everything seems to be. It’s not what she wants to do, she knows that; it’s only a way to fill time; a distraction from things she wants to do but can’t.

When she’d been away, Rebecca had started to take walks, at first just around the village, but then going out further into the fields and woods, taking long, meandering routes, where she’d lose her way and the village would disappear, and she’d have been walking for too long to remember all her steps to retrace them. On one walk she stopped at the edge of a wood where it came out onto a field. The field sloped down and then dropped away suddenly, out of sight into a valley. She’d sat on a simple bench made out of two logs and a plank of wood. There was the forgotten sound and feeling of wind moving over nature, and she watched the short grass bend and bristle, digging the heels of her trainers into the ground. There was only one way forward from here, down into the valley that was hidden from sight. She stood up and looked at the clouding sky and walked away from the shelter of the wood. The wind blew free in the emptiness, her thin coat concaved into her stomach and she felt a chill in her chest that made her pull her arms closer to her body. She walked further out across the field, until it started to slope down, gently at first but then steeper. She started to lean back to keep her balance, putting her hand out against the hill. Her trainers started to slide away from under her. She stopped, the bottom of the valley was still out of sight and behind her was only grass and sky. It was there, in between the sky and the earth, that she decided turn around, back into the wood, and then to London.

Insider the bar the music is louder and people are dancing. Rebecca sees there is only one man in the booth, as the other two men and women dance in pairs. The man in the booth looks at his ‘phone. The light of the screen shows him let out a sigh as he pinches the skin on his forehead. He stands up and wobbles against the table, making an empty bottle topple onto its side. Rebecca winces at the noise, but nobody else notices, and the man walks away.

“Hey!” Chloe says as Leo arrives and puts his arm around her, pulling her in towards him. Chloe smiles up at him, her hands clutched together under her chin. Leo seems more attractive than Rebecca can remember him being; his face and hair more perfect, and she feels overcome by a reluctant and vindictive lust. But it’s not just the way Leo looks, there’s something so certain and definite about him and Chloe; something that makes it seem so simple and easy for them, when Rebecca has only known doubts and confusion. ‘You think about things too much’, Chloe had once told her, and maybe that was true, but it can’t explain everything, not all of the disappointments, and sometimes she felt she hadn’t thought about things enough.

Later, in the booth, Rebecca sits next to Chloe, who presses her face into Leo’s chest and doesn’t speak. Rebecca closes her eyes and tries to think of all the places she’d rather be. She thinks of her flat and the silver tray, and the numbers she’s deleted from her ‘phone. She thinks of trains and hotels and airports; her childhood bedroom. She thinks of the bench and the valley, and wishes she’d carried on walking.